■ SAUDI ARABIA
Prince criticizes rape ruling
A senior Saudi official on Monday sought to distance his government from a court's decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes. "Unfortunately, these things happen. Bad judgments occur in legal systems," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters while in Washington to attend a Middle East peace conference in Maryland. The 19-year-old Shiite woman was abducted and raped along with a male companion by seven men. Faisal said the judgment was being used to vilify the Saudi government even though it was not responsible because the courts are independent. "Issues like that, bad judgments by the courts, happen everywhere, even in the United States," he said. "It is a process that is still going on. This is being reviewed by a legal process and we hope it will be changed."
■ ECUADOR
Seven die in mine blast
Seven miners were killed, 40 were injured and 30 were missing after a dynamite blast at a gold mine in Azuay Province in southern Ecuador, firefighters said on Monday. A short circuit may have triggered the explosion in the private Liga de Oro mine's dynamite depository, but authorities were still trying to confirm what caused the accident, firefighter chief Rodrigo Durazno said. About 400 people, mostly Peruvian immigrants, work in the mine, Durazno said.
■ UNITED STATES
Farmer cuts off trapped arm
A South Carolina farmer was forced to cut off his arm with a pocket knife after a farm machine in which his hand was trapped burst into flames. "If I was going to die here I was going to put up a fight, and that's basically what I did," Sampson Parker told a local reporter. Parker had noticed a corn stalk stuck in a picker, but when he attempted to remove it, the machine caught his glove, pulling his hand into a mechanical roller. He used a metal rod to stop the machine and called for help. With no help forthcoming, he decided to cut off his fingers. But when the machine caught fire, the trapped farmer had to cut off his arm to escape.
■ UNITED STATES
Death not linked to 9/11
New York City's chief medical examiner has decided not to reclassify the death of a police officer who worked at Ground Zero as a homicide linked to the attack on the twin towers because the officer did not arrive at the site until Sept. 13, 2001. When the officer, James Godbee Jr, died in December 2004 at age 44, the medical examiner's office listed the cause of death as sarcoidosis, a disease that scars the lungs and other organs. Although the death certificate did not link Godbee's disease to the days he spent at Ground Zero, the police pension fund did make that link later, granting the officer's widow a line-of-duty pension.
■ UNITED STATES
Hackers steal charities' data
Hackers obtained access last month to the e-mail addresses and passwords of thousands of donors to 92 charities that use online database software and services from Convio Inc. Among the charities are CARE and the American Museum of Natural History. There is no evidence that anyone has used the information to engage in fraud, but several charities have notified donors of the breach and advised them to consider changing passwords if they use the same password for other purposes. Convio, of Austin, Texas, which works primarily with charities, discovered the breach on Nov. 1 and told clients about it two days later, said Tad Druart, a spokesman, adding that the "investigation is continuing."
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